Free Angle of Attack by Rex Burns Page A

stuff.”
    “He pulled the job while he was drunk?”
    Franconi’s eyebrows shrugged. “It’s not so unusual. Granted, you’re more likely to get stickups from drunken impulse than you are burglary. Still, it does happen, especially with your younger class of criminal.”
    “I thought Covino had a little more going for him than that. I thought he was a pro.”
    “Granted, that’s generally for the amateurs. But Covino wasn’t that much of a professional. We placed him in a holding cell until he sobered up and then tried to clear as many cases off him as we could. And there just weren’t that many. He admitted to half a dozen break-ins and burglaries, and that was all.”
    If a suspect stood a good chance of conviction on one charge, it paid him to confess to all the others he had gotten away with. That way, he couldn’t be prosecuted on those after he was given his time for the first one. But Wager still felt something slippery underneath the surface of facts. “Covino has been out of Buena Vista for five or six years. Are you telling me he only pulled half a dozen burglaries in that time?”
    “That’s all he admitted to. What would he gain by lying about that?”
    A shorter sentence. But most wouldn’t gamble that against further convictions. Unless there was something Wager could not yet see clearly. “Any idea what else he was up to before he tumbled?”
    “Nothing concrete. We of course asked around when we checked up on his claims to the other burglaries. But you know how that is—if you have someone who wants to help you clear your books, you’re not going to try very hard to paint him as a perjurer.”
    “Any talk about him at all?”
    “Only that he was very hungry for the big time. But most of our respondents thought he talked a great deal more than he accomplished. It merely adds up to the familiar picture of a small-time hood with dreams of glory.”
    If that was the case, Covino would have been likely to exaggerate his other jobs. “Did you ever hear of a tie between his name and any of the Scorvellis?”
    “No. I don’t recall any. I don’t think it’s likely, though. Covino was a nonentity. Indirectly, of course, he may have known them through his fence—the Scorvellis have a finger in that pie, too. But Covino never named his fence. He was quite arrogant about not spilling a thing.”
    “You said he wasn’t alone on this drugstore thing. Any leads?”
    “None. And the only reason I think he had accomplices is because he had no transportation in the vicinity.”
    Wager thought that over. “West Thirty-eighth’s not too far from where he lived. He might have walked.”
    “That’s possible, but not likely. My experience shows that most burglars will have a car within a block, either to pull up and load the goods or to put a lot of distance between them and the crime scene. There were no abandoned cars in the vicinity, and it’s likely that the accomplices were parked at the back door, waiting for him to come out. Remember now, at this point in time, Covino had been in there long enough to pass out. A burglary like that should have taken, at the most, three or four minutes once the door was open. By the time I reached the alley, some eight or ten minutes had passed since the alarm went off. If Covino’s accomplices were as amateurish as he was, they would be extremely nervous and might have left as soon as McBride and the other officer tried the front door. Or they might have had a police frequency scanner and heard the dispatcher call McBride. That technique’s becoming quite popular of late. Either way, if they drove out the other end of the alley, I’d never have seen them.”
    And, Wager thought wearily, that left things about where they had been. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the cars.”
    “Be with you in a minute. I want to wash up and comb my hair.”

Five
    W EDNESDAY MORNINGS WERE still conference mornings at the Organized Crime Unit’s headquarters in the old